Saturday, November 17, 2012

If someone would have told me 8 1/2 years ago that one phone call would change my life forever I would have never believed them. But that is exactly what happened. We were not on any adoption lists nor had we applied to adopt or even do foster care. We had three children who were 10, 13 and 14 at the time, when we got the phone call one April morning that would forever change our lives. There was a precious baby girl who was coming into care and needed a home to go to. The birth mother was asked where she wanted the baby placed and she said US! We had less than 18 hours notice from the time we got the first call to the time we picked her up from the hospital.

Once we picked up "Miss Mew" from the hospital we were told it would be on a 6 month order. After bringing home this precious baby we noticed a few different things happening. We had to rush her to children's hospital in London where she got many different diagnosis. The first was a seizure disorder but the main one being Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. I won't go on with her diagnosis because that is a book in itself. But she came back home to live with us after her seizures were under control. Before she left the hospital we got a call from Family and Children's Services asking if we would want to adopt our precious girl. It took no thought at all and my instant reaction was YES we would adopt her. We chose to adopt her because we wanted to make sure that everyone was done to make sure that she progressed to her fullest potential and we couldn't know that unless she remained with us and of course we had fallen in love with this precious baby girl.

I did have a conversation with her birth mother and I asked her if she wanted us to adopt her or if she wanted her to return to care. That was the only option we were all ever given. She told me she wanted us to adopt her and treat her as our own. It was a given that we were going to treat her as our own. I would have it no other way. So we went forward with the adoption process and by December of 2004 our precious baby girl was ours!

That is how our adoption came to be and how we became the parents of our fourth child a precious baby girl who is now 8 years old and the light of my life.

I want to address something that might come across as strange to many of you but it is a question I get asked a lot so I want to address it in this post and the question is:

Do I love my baby girl as much as I love the children I gave birth to?
I do love her as much. A child takes a portion of your heart no matter how they come into your lives. I love her to the moon and back and then more and more. I could not imagine my life without her. So the answer is YES I do love her as much as the children I gave birth to. And those who know us know that this is definitely the truth. Every day is such a blessing with her in my life.